Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Business Update

lord duncan of springbank: My honourable Friend, the Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility, made the following Statement today: I am writing to inform the House of changes to National Minimum Wage Enforcement. We want to make it as easy as possible for businesses particularly SMEs to comply with the law, whilst ensuring that workers get the wages that they are entitled to, and if they don’t, we will continue to crack down on companies that underpay their workers. Last year, we consulted on specific aspects of the National Minimum Wage regulations (salaried hours and salary sacrifice). Following this consultation, we are making technical changes to the National Minimum Wage regulations. These changes will address areas of the regulations that are tripping up employers, without reducing worker protections. Businesses are supportive of these technical changes.Salaried workers must be paid an annual salary for working a particular number of hours over the course of a year and paid in equal instalments. Changes to the regulations will widen the range of pay arrangements that are compatible with workers being treated as salaried hours worker to increase flexibility for the worker and employers, including: Increasing the range of compatible payment cycles to salaried hours workers (such as every two weeks or four weeks – currently only monthly or weekly payment cycles are compatible);Making premium payments to salaried hours workers compatible (such as for working on bank holidays), including where a salaried hours worker’s contract specifies a premium pay arrangement; andEnabling employers to specify the ‘calculation year’ for their salaried workers (the reference point to identify when in a year a worker’s basic annual hours, for which they receive their salary, are exceeded). The Government will also continue to name employers who fail to pay the National Minimum Wage, following a review of the scheme. We are making the public naming scheme more effective. We are increasing the frequency of naming those companies who underpay, and from now on, the threshold for naming employers who do not pay National Minimum Wage will rise to £500, meaning that any firm which owes arrears of more than £500 in National Minimum Wage payments to its workforce will be named. Whilst still tough on business, this will ensure that those that underpay by a minimal amount can set things right and correct their mistakes. We recognise that there is a need to educate employers and support them to comply before enforcement action becomes necessary. To achieve this, future naming rounds will be supported by a quarterly educational bulletin to highlight details of common compliance issues, including anonymised case studies demonstrating how employers can become compliant. To better contextualise the relative severity of breaches we will publish additional information wherever possible.Finally, as part of our drive to support businesses to comply with the legislation we are: providing support via a helpline for employers who operate deduction or salary sacrifice schemes. Employers will be able to access support and information directly from HMRC; requesting HMRC to do more to proactively support new, small businesses. HMRC will visit selected new, small businesses to educate them on the National Minimum Wage and support those businesses in getting their practices right from the start; and producing enhanced, business facing National Minimum Wage guidance, that will be published shortly. We will continue to look at these issues; for salary sacrifice and deductions we are waiving financial penalties for employers for certain breaches of rules (subject to eligibility criteria), recognising that, in some limited instances, employers may be penalised for offering these benefit schemes to workers and misunderstanding the rules. For example, those that offer a benefit to their workers, such as nurseries offering discounted childcare for staff may find that they have inadvertently breached pay rules, as they make deductions which takes the take-home pay below minimum wage. Subject to strict criteria, including that the worker opted in to the scheme, we will waive financial penalties for such breaches. We are determined to increase compliance, whilst ensuring workers receive the pay they are entitled to, continuing to be tough on enforcement with companies that break the rules.

Department for Work and Pensions

Personal Independence Payment

baroness stedman-scott: My honourable Friend the Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson MP) has made the following Written Statement.I would like to update the House on the department’s progress in making backdated payments to Personal Independence Payment claimants who are benefitting from the MH and RJ decisions of the Upper Tribunal.The MH decision changed how overwhelming psychological distress is considered when assessing someone’s ability to plan and follow a journey. The RJ decision concerned how we decide whether someone can carry out everyday activities safely or not, and whether they need supervision.We are committed to ensuring everyone with a health condition or disability gets the support they are entitled to. This is why we have dedicated substantial resource to checking claims, so that we can pay eligible people as quickly as possible. We remain on track to finish this exercise in 2020.Thanks to our continuous monitoring of the exercise, we know which claimants are most likely to benefit. This now allows us to focus on those cases and to make backdated payments to eligible claimants more quickly. We will write to all other claimants in scope of the exercise, explaining the Upper Tribunal decisions and how they can get in touch with us if they think they may benefit and want to ask us to review their case.We have said that we will keep the House updated and I can announce that the department has today published the third ad hoc release of Management Information on this exercise: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pip-administrative-exercise-progress-on-cases-cleared-at-5-january-2020Since the exercise began on 25 June 2018 (HCWS793) up to 05 January 2020, we have cleared 720,000 cases against the MH decision and 820,000 cases against the RJ decision, with most cases being cleared against both Upper Tribunal decisions. In total, we have paid £28 million in arrears to 5,900 claimants.We are continuing to monitor the numbers of revised awards closely and have a comprehensive quality assurance framework in place to ensure we make the right decisions. In addition, my officials and I are always happy to hear of any specific feedback on the exercise.We have set out new and updated information on the administrative exercise in the updated Frequently Asked Questions. I will deposit a copy of this document in the Library.I will continue to update the House.


This statement has also been made in the House of Commons: 
HCWS104

Ministry of Defence

Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association External Scrutiny Team Report 2019

baroness goldie: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence (The Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.I have today placed in the in the Library of the House a copy of a letter that I have sent to Major General (Retd) Simon Lalor, the Chairman of the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association External Scrutiny Team, to respond to the recommendations contained in the Team’s 2019 report. I am most grateful to the Team for their work.